


A Certain Physical Curiosity

by icarus_chained



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Marriage, Multi, Play Fighting, Polyamory, Sex, Threesome - F/M/M, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1249291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small, fluffy interlude in which Sam, Sybil and Havelock physically negotiate the differences their developing relationship has made to them. Also, Sam gets accidentally kicked out of the bed. Damn near twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Certain Physical Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> ... I had a notion? I don't even know. My apologies. *grins sheepishly*

The thing about Sybil was, she had a certain tendency towards physical curiosity in, ah, intimate encounters. She liked to explore, was the thing. Hands everywhere, and absolutely not shy about it at all. It was one of those things that had shocked Sam a little in the beginning. Though it probably shouldn't have, considering that he'd seen her with a hand up a dragon's *ahem* fairly early on in their acquaintance. He'd jokingly asked her if she was checking him for scale growth a time or two, when that wonderful comparison had first presented itself for his consideration, and had found her amused hum of almost-agreement really rather alarming in response.

It wasn't something he'd really thought about it a while, though. They'd grown more familiar with each other over the years, physically and otherwise, and the feel of her hands wandering absently into various crevices had long since stopped being startling to him. It was only now, watching Havelock deal with it for the first time, and occasionally not managing very well, that he remembered it at all.

Not that he blamed Sybil much, of course. Havelock was all knobs and angles, lean lines and surprising patches of hair, the white-on-white of old scar tissue a fascinating study in textures. And he always looked so _startled_ by it, their investigation, a flare of his nostrils and something just on the verge of alarm in his eyes. Sam admitted, a lot more cheerfully than he'd once have done, that he'd commit to all _sorts_ of exploration in order to keep putting that look on Havelock Vetinari's face. In that, as in so many things of late, he and his wife were in perfect agreement.

Havelock quite possibly _wasn't_ , mind, but given that he hadn't left them yet, Sam figured he was at least content enough to be going on with. He'd taken to fixing an expression of amused tolerance on his face, like a cat too lazy to protest being petted, and occasionally exchanging long-suffering looks with Sam every time Sybil gave a startled hum of discovery as her brain caught up with her wandering fingers. Sam usually just grinned smugly back, and pinched the bastard when that bloody eyebrow took another amused hike upwards. He'd startled a laugh out of the man the first time he'd done, and to this day considered it one of his finest triumphs in the field of bedroom warfare. 

And before anyone commented on the phrasing, he'd like them to consider any bed that had Havelock Vetinari in it, and dare them to come up with anything more appropriate.

It was Havelock's knees Sybil was interested in tonight. They were all rather ruined and pleasantly exhausted, the main event, as it were, having finished about twenty minutes previously, and Sybil's fingers were idly tracing out the patella of Havelock's good leg while she visibly considered the possibility of a second go. Sam watched absently from his position further down the bed, smirking silently to himself as faint tremors ran up Havelock's thigh, a vague frown of annoyance beginning to form on the Patrician's face. It was a lot more reaction than Havelock usually allowed, alright, but they'd been a touch more energetic than normal, and Sam rather fancied that the man was just too exhausted for his usual semi-rigid control. 

Hmm. Perhaps they ought to try that position a bit more often ...

Sybil's thumb brushed lightly around the back of Havelock's knee, the dragon-induced callouses rasping a little over his skin, and Havelock's control abruptly _snapped_ , his leg pistoning out and only decades' worth of street fighting instincts saving Sam's unmentionables from an agonising encounter. It wasn't enough to save him entirely, however, and he slid half-off the end of the bed with a startled oomph and a thigh that was rapidly going numb, staring in stunned shock back up the bed.

Havelock, eyes wide, stared back at him with an equally startled expression, and Sybil had snatched her hand back with a combination of dragon-trained reflexes and stunned amazement, staring at Sam as he clutched precariously at the sheets and tried to work out what the _hell_ had just happened. For a long second, nobody moved.

And then, with a desperate hitch of breath, Sybil burst into giggles, her hand darting to her mouth to muffle the hiccuping sounds and her shoulders shaking with desperate amusement. She shook her head, eyes bright with mirth, and let loose peal after peal of delighted laughter. 

Havelock, with a flush of something a great deal like mortified embarrassment, reached up to drape one fine-boned hand over his eyes and seemed to be trying to pretend with _great fervour_ that this wasn't happening. 

And Sam, presented with that sight, could do nothing but slide helplessly the rest of the way off the bed and follow his wife's example, sitting drunkenly in a puddle of sheets and snorting giddily to himself.

"... If you two are _quite_ finished," Havelock murmured, hand still pressed firmly over his eyes and all the offended dignity of a cat in his tone. Sybil, who'd just be catching her breath, promptly lost herself all over again, shaking her head desperately and reaching down to wrap her arm around Havelock's head and shoulders, hugging him close to her while he determinedly pretended she didn't exist.

"Oh goodness," she gasped, eyes bright and laughing as they met Sam's. "Oh, I'm sorry, Havelock. I'm so sorry. I just ..." She bit her lip, struggling valiantly. "It's just I never thought you might be _ticklish_ , you see ..."

"I am _not_ ..." he started, removing his hand at last in order to glare at her in affronted denial, and then stopped. Seeing the startled consideration in her eyes, the wicked gleam beginning to dawn, Havelock stopped that sentence in its tracks. 

But oh, so very much too late. 

Sybil glanced over at Sam, a bright-eyed and silent cue, and he came up into a crouch even as Havelock's narrow glare swung his way. His thigh twinged almost in sympathy with that warning, that silent command of 'don't you _dare_ ', but Sam ignored it. He grinned cheerfully back, the old rush of adrenalin he always felt when facing an assassin, and pounced just as Havelock swiveled to get an elbow under him and one arm up to strike.

If had been just him and Havelock, he reflected, there was no telling which way it might have gone. He was arguably fitter by this stage, with more daily practice behind him and without the handicap of Havelock's bad leg, but while Sam's beast was a thoroughly nasty thing, Havelock's was a true piece of _work_ that knew full well to go for the dirty shot straight out of the gate. A pair of stiffened fingers skimming his ribs almost ruined him before he'd even landed, and it was sheer dumb luck and a glancing blow against the bum leg that kept Havelock from neatly tossing him right back off the bed again. The Patrician immediately moved to capitalise on it, ignoring the throb in his leg with all the skill of an ex-assassin, and Sam knew a definite moment of bright-dark delight at his own impending doom.

But the thing of it was, you shouldn't ever reckon without Sybil. Not while she was in a bed with you. Sam and Havelock might have gone either way, and vicious all the way to the bank, but Sybil was a great deal more civilised, and also outweighed both of them by some amount. Havelock, cobbled together out of sticks and bits of string as he was, might have stood a fighting chance against either one of them, but never against _both_.

They fetched up in a heap around Sybil's side of the bed, Havelock pinned beneath them with a wild and dangerous look in his eyes, Sam with his arms wrapped wheezingly around the bastard's waist and his head thumping against Havelock's ribs, Sybil with all her weight leaning quellingly on Havelock's shoulders and her smile beaming bright and happy down at him. He glared up at her, a flash of that same startled thing he always seemed to have in moments like this, and his heart under Sam's ear hammered out a rapid timpani beat.

And then, as rapidly, he went lax beneath them, limbs going loose and languid and that flat, lethal amusement slipping back into his eyes. "Whatever the pair of you are considering," he warned lightly, every inch the Patrician once more, "I would _strongly_ advise against it."

Which Sam would have responded to, right enough, he would have definitely answered that dare as it deserved, but he was a little distracted dealing with a sudden leap of _emphatic_ interest in his nether regions.

Bloody hell. As amusing as it was to watch Havelock struggle to deal with the parts of his and Sybil's relationship that Sam had long grown used to, it was about as alarming to try and get used to all the strange facets _Havelock_ had brought with him. In particular, this perpetual leap of danger that kept getting the pair of them all hot and bothered at awkward moments, a thrill down the spine that distracted them and gave the bastard so much more of an upper hand than should be allowed, outnumbered as he was. And he _knew_ it, too, the little hitch in Sybil's breathing matching the tiny smirk curling at the corner of his mouth, and Sam just couldn't deal with that. Really, he couldn't.

He swallowed thickly, glancing up to see Sybil's eyes darkening in time with his, and shook his head at her, at the strange little smile that crept onto her features, wide and bare and secret between the three of them. Naked as her bare head and Havelock's white knees, as the small of Sam's back where hairs stirred in nervous anticipation. Just for them. Always, just for them.

"We wouldn't dream of it, Havelock," Sybil murmured after a moment. Keeping her gaze on Sam for another second, that hum of connection between them, before turning her eyes back down to her captive. To Havelock's dark gaze staring up at her, and the tiny smile still decorating their assassin's mouth. She hummed, absent and unafraid, and leaned down to taste that smile from him, to mouth softly across his lips and his cheeks, and explore as was her wont. Havelock made a soft little sound, quiet and startled and amused, and Sam felt something lurch in his chest, a thick, salty knot of possession and appreciation and hot, dark desire. Havelock stirred beneath him, his interest pressing up into Sam's chest, and Sam thought he could safely say that all thought of tickling had fled before another kind of thought altogether.

Or at least, he thought so until Sybil pulled back, her lips red and wet and grinning like a cat, and brushed her hand down Havelock's side while he lay helpless and unguarded beneath her. Havelock swore in shock, bucking upwards with enough force to almost throw Sam out of the bed _again_ , and gasped up at her in stunned, appreciative dismay.

"As I said," Sybil reiterated primly, wiggling her fingers gently in the air as they stared at her. "We wouldn't _dream_ of it, Havelock. Goodness no. Most definitely not." And then, yet again, there was nothing for Sam to do save drop his head with a thump onto Havelock's ribs and laugh helplessly for the pair of them.

Yes, oh yes. It didn't ever do to reckon without Sybil. He'd learned _that_ one right enough.

And he did, he thought, so look forward to watching Havelock learn it too.


End file.
